


What to Leave Behind

by Laylah



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Altered States, Comrades, M/M, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:27:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He still wants to be comrades. The two of them against the people who want to use them, not against each other.</p><p>[second game spoilers]</p>
            </blockquote>





	What to Leave Behind

This sensation, Serph thinks, is called _floating_. It's reassuring to know. His hands move slowly through the -- fluid? can that be right? he wears no apparatus, but he's breathing, or at least not drowning -- to find his chest, his stomach, discovering his uniform untorn and his body whole. That can't be right. He opens his eyes.

The fluid he floats in is clear, spun through with light, and he nearly has a description for it in his head, nearly but not quite. Varna is facing him, or almost Varna, because this demon is pale and shimmering as -- pearls, he thinks. Almost-Varna sways, arms limp at its sides like it's ailment-sick.

"Sera," it says, and its voice is quiet and thick with the fluid, but almost like Serph's own. "Please. Sera."

Serph shakes his head. He doesn't know where she is now. He wonders if he should transform, too, but the Water Crown is quiet on his cheek, so silent he can't even feel its chill.

"Sera," almost-Varna pleads again.

"She's not here," a familiar voice growls from behind him. Heat. Serph turns, slowly, as Heat goes on, "There's nothing for you here. Go look for her somewhere else."

The Varna copy backs away, fading into the liquid more than anything else, and Serph watches Heat. He should be wary -- Heat is the reason he's here, the one who tore him apart and fell with him into this mess. But Heat is also his comrade, his lieutenant, his balance. He waits. He won't strike first.

"Man," Heat says, "here I thought for sure she'd make you better than me."

Serph's mouth shapes the word _what?_ even though sound won't come easily to him.

"That's a -- a piece of you, or a version, or something. There's a cat in here -- well, there is and there isn't," Heat says, and he sounds like that...pleases him? "But when there is, it has interesting things to say. About the people who came before us, the way Beck came before Varin. And about the way Sera imagines us." Heat shakes his head. "I thought the one she made of _me_ was bad -- you've never seen such an ugly monster -- but that thing was just pathetic."

Serph tries a smile. It feels clumsy and strange, something his mouth barely remembers how to do, but he wants Heat to know he's glad to see him. He still wants to be comrades. The two of them against the people who want to use them, not against each other.

Heat smiles back, awkward and unpracticed. "You're the one I'm looking for, aren't you? Not the asshole from before, and not the needy one. You're the Embryon's leader." He moves closer, slowed by the weight of the fluid. "I want to say, the real one. Schroedinger says we're all real. And none of us are. But you're the one I belong with."

That sounds right to him. Serph reaches out as Heat does, hands clasping each other's forearms, and when Serph pulls, Heat slides closer. For a fraction of a second, as Heat's other hand finds his waist, Serph remembers the pain, Agni's claws ripping through flesh -- but he pushes the fear away. They are comrades.

He pulls Heat into his arms, close. He's learned more about what this means, since Sera first brought this gesture to the Junkyard. He's seen humans do this for each other now, thinks he understands why.

And Heat feels good in his arms. Solid. True. Serph turns his head and Heat tilts his head back, throat bared pale and soft. It was Varna who taught Serph the first meaning of _that_, but it means more than just one thing, too, the same way it does when Serph answers the gesture with his mouth against Heat's skin. Heat shudders, holds tighter, doesn't pull away. Serph reaches up to thread his fingers into Heat's hair and pull him down so his lips press above Serph's collar. Together. They should do this together. The Junkyard held that a leader is irreplaceable. This Nirvana is teaching that no-one can afford to be lost.

Serph moves first, unclasping Heat's cape so that it slips away, and Heat touches the round seals of his armor in return. "This is what you want?" Heat asks. His voice growls, but not with anger. Serph nods.

Their hands know this skill as well as the steps to disassemble a comrade's rifle. Sleeves, boots, gloves, clasps undone and plates fallen away and Serph wants to trace every bared centimeter of skin with his mouth. Heat's hands slide down his sides as they twist weightless in the warmth of the fluid. Heat's teeth scrape the inside of his thigh.

The black under-armor peels off, too, all their protective skins shed. Skin to skin, mouths and hands seeking. All their vulnerable points are bared, but -- this is nothing to be afraid of. Heat's not looking for a fight any more than Serph is, not now. The one who came before him used to do this, do things like this, but Serph shrugs the memory off. He isn't that man and he doesn't think he wants to understand this the way _he_ would have. They press their mouths to each other's skin and it's intense as devouring but it's trust, also, Heat's mouth careful around him and Heat's flesh offered willingly between his teeth.

There's no fight left, now, no anger between them -- like they've left that, or it's left them, gone off in a separate shape that's almost but not quite right. Here, there's just heat and Heat and wetness more tangible than the fluid around them, and a hunger both like and unlike the atma's, and then relief, and Serph's tongue slick with salt both heavier and more bitter than blood.

He doesn't want to let go, after they've both finished, and Heat doesn't seem to mind it, either. They hold on loosely, staying close, drifting.

"If I don't get the chance, and you do," Heat says eventually, "will you tell Sera I'm sorry?"

Serph tightens his grip on Heat's hand. He doesn't like the sound of that.

"Don't look at me like that," Heat says. "It's just. Even if the others come back, they'd be here for you, not for me." He smiles, and he looks...calm, maybe. The anger is some other part of him, something far away. "Kind of looks like we get to do all this stuff over again anyway. I -- I want to be your comrade again next time. See if I can fuck it up a little less."

"I want that too," Serph says, his voice rusty, and it's not until Heat laughs at him that he realizes how it must have sounded. He makes a face.

Heat shakes his head. "It's okay," he says. "I know what you meant." He doesn't let go, and Serph doesn't, either. They'll leave here together, Serph thinks. And it'll be those other selves that they leave behind.


End file.
